PRESS

The opium of the people is no longer religion, Marx was wrong, 

today it is television... We forget to ask for our soul, 

today we ask for colored churros and channels by the dozen.

we forget to ask for our soul, 

today we ask for colored churros 

and channels by the bucketload.

Mario A. Almazán

For reporter Leticia Mendoza today was a strange day. She was always doing reports for show business and did not know what it meant to do something improvised. But she was the closest to the site of the incident and her boss had sent her to cover it, besides, no one in twenty years had ever been to a violent event. To defend the reporters, there were androids that filmed everything and then the material was edited before being aired.

Even though information never stops flowing to the stations — Leticia thought — it is necessary to exhaust every ounce of interest in anything (she had spent three weeks commenting on the flatulence of a minor politician).

But her fame was running out, people were not interested in politicians, but in sportsmen, artists and suicides; all the morbidity in the people she saw daily in and out of the tri-vision... And it had happened to her, an explosion in an industrial complex, the opportunity to see the devastated area, she was the only one. She got into her van and left one of her androids to film an underage sex scene starring an athlete who was well known for his pedophilia (about three days of entertainment, maybe).

The cameramen had been replaced, five years ago, something she did not stop regretting now that she wanted a human word, but the lens of her camera-bot (a robot of a meter and a half with six video cameras and eight hours of autonomy) was limited to follow her movements and record her in close-up. Being an entertainment reporter, she dressed soberly, no show business personality wanted to be overshadowed by the one who is supposed to keep them popular: jacket and tight pants, old-fashioned hairstyle, lack of makeup, her only attraction was a bra-hot (a bra that changes its tone according to the temperature of the wearer) and she counted on her youth, of course. And with this scoop. No news crew was allowed to approach, but since she was inside the sealed area she could enter. The others would just use their camera-bots. With an opportunity like this she was likely to get a role in a "comedy", perhaps as a villain, so she had to get ready for her future.

As soon as she arrived at the site of the incident she realized that something was wrong, the area looked devastated, as in any war site... but so much for the similarities of what little she remembered of the last wars: the sites looked torn apart by bombs responsible for dismantling the infrastructure and destroying the means of energy production. But this...this was different! A ridiculously burned area, the walls and conveyor belts were twisted, much of the houses warped in what must have been terrible heat, the scorched courtyards provided uncivilized images of war... it was a purification by fire.

Whether it was bland or not, she was never suicidal. She knew the experiments that could be done in a plant and knew of the possibility of a radioactive leak, so she put on her insulating suit, more like an asbestos suit, but lighter and with climbing implements, no one could get out of her news van without it. As he moved through the craters it disturbed him to see how accurate the explosions were: homes, businesses, schools and churches were wiped off the map, stores were fine, but the streets to get to them were impregnable. As he got closer it was evident that he could not follow with his camera-bot, so he dismounted his iris-cam (see what you see) which attached to his eyes and began to record via wireless, sending all the information to his truck; he did the connection tests, took a breath and moved on.

The signal of being on the air was marked in her field of vision when she reached the base of the largest crater, just before reaching the plant; although she had breath to speak she pretended to be exhausted, as she didn't want to tell the audience something she didn't understand. Things were getting complicated fast and she didn't know if she could say something that didn't make sense, because it wouldn't make sense.

The news, which she followed on the small screen located on her wrist, indicated that the area she was in had been declared an epidemiological and even radioactive disaster zone, but the sensors in her suit glowed with the purity of green, not even yellow with the tones of contamination, this land was just scorched.

The scent pervaded everywhere... even with the filtered air there was another scent on the edge of the crater, about three meters above the ground (far beyond the reach of her eyes). But there was something there and arming herself with determination she began to climb.